% Federation of Freedom is live
% Leah Rowe
% 25 December 2022

I've been mulling over the concept behind Fedfree for just over a year,
contemplating exactly what I want the site to be. This month, of
December 2022, I decided to just launch it, with a simple set of goals
to start off with. As of today, I'm still fuzzy about it, which is why
I haven't launched it until today. Some of you who talk to me on IRC will
have seen me talk about Fedfree before, with the ideas I have... I've decided
to just roll with it, and see where the road takes me.

Free Federation, Free Society
=============================

Fedfree is a website aimed at teaching people how to run their own
servers, of various kinds, on libre operating systems e.g. Linux
and BSD. It aims to do this, using *libre software* exclusively, teaching
people about the importance of libre software and hardware as it pertains
to freedom; the right to use, study, adapt, share. The right to read.
Universal access to knowledge... education. *Education* is the goal.

At the time of launch, one guide existed on Fedfree, the one that teaches you
how to create an L2TP tunnel router for static IPv4 and IPv6 subnets on your
home or business internet connection. More guides will be written, today and
on other days in the future, teaching you how to set up all kinds of servers.
The next priority is also to make a *much* simpler tunnel tutorial, simply
showing how to forward ports in `autossh`.

The goal is to spread libre software ideology, while providing a practical
means for people to know how to conduct themselves, such as:

* Advice about how to start your own projects
* How to get into computer science, electronics and other computer-related
  fields... but not to get you a job at *Microsoft* or *Apple*. Fedfree
  wants everything to be open and free, and for people to help themselves,
  working cooperatively over the internet, in true open source style.
* How to run and maintain your own infrastructure (free of interference
  from third parties, as much as is feasible - you still need an ISP,
  domain name registrar, possibly a CDN provider, etc). Many people want
  to run their own emails for example, but don't know how, which is why
  non-solutions such as Riseup and Protonmail exist (pure snakeoil, all).
* Many links to external resources, about many different topics. For example,
  when to use FreeBSD vs OpenBSD or vice versa, or situations where Linux
  might be better, comparing various technologies e.g. nginx vs openbsd
  httpd, postfix vs openbsd's opensmtpd, etc.

The *mentality* behind Fedfree is that all the organisations out there,
like SFC, GNU, EFF, FSF... April... all these organisations are good, but
they can only do so much. *We* as libre software activists must organise,
but how? First, we need infrastructure, our *own* infrastructure that we
control, and we need a *charter* that defines our movement. By definition,
the libre movement is loose and free, where people can do whatever they
like, but most people today use centralised hosting services like Github,
which means we have *huge* single points of failure.

Seriously. Microsoft owns GitHub, yet millions of projects out there all
use it. It's nuts.

Most of the internet's problems exist, precisely because of such centralised
infrastructure. When one person can cancel your service and take your project
offline, you don't have freedom; you have a loaded gun pointed at your head.

So many libre software projects exist today, but they're all using centralised
gatekeeper services like GitHub or GitLab.com. Information is available online,
but dotted sporadically across the internet, for how to run your own servers,
but nothing really *concise* exists. What we lack on the internet is a
good one-stop shop for any sort of information you need. Fedfree aims to
fill that gap.

*This website is hosted in Git*, and (at least the version released today) all
of it is under Creative Commons Zero (including this news post).

People are encouraged to submit their own tutorials and other resources to the
website, to help it grow. More information about on [the git page](../git.md) -
the Fedfree website is written in Markdown, compiled by a static site
generator [that I wrote myself](https://untitled.vimuser.org/).

Fedfree's mission is to bring back the *real internet* to normal people,
the one where *you* can have your own unique voice on the internet,
without plugging into the hive mind that is websites like twitter or youtube.

The real internet *exists*. Fedfree's mission is to teach you how to use it.
Every part of it. To most people, it is hidden. Your ISP might put you behind
a CGNAT for example, or outright ban you from opening ports; one of Fedfree's
goals is to teach you how to set up various kinds of tunnel connections
e.g. SSH port forwarding, PPP over L2TP, Wireguard/OpenVPN, etc.

The first rule of Fedfree is: you do not talk about Fedfree.

The idea is this:

* The best email provider is *you*
* The best DNS provider is *you*
* The best webhosting provider is *you*
* *Get off of Twitter immediately.* - Join Mastodon!
  <https://joinmastodon.org/>

Fedfree will also provide advice in general about liberty-minded
services like Mastodon, as opposed to Twitter or, say, peertube instead
of Youtube; in some cases, you may not want to host servers, but you do
want to use something that respects your privacy and civil liberties,
where you won't be randomly censored because a south african billionaire
nazi doesn't like what you tweet.

Another aim of Fedfree is to link to resources about programming, and
other topics pertaining to computer science, also electronics. Anything
tech-related, with the aim of putting *you* in control, not some company
that wants to control you.

*Information*, *education*. Education, education, education... that is what
Fedfree is all about.

Fedfree's aims are vast, and this is a very young project just starting
out, so it's starting out small, but the scope will grow, over time.

This news page is kept brief, because otherwise it would be overly repetitive,
since the rest of the website will go into detail about each topic it covers,
or will cover.

What more is there to say? Feel free to navigate the rest of this website.
I'm starting out small, but this website will expand over time.

Fedfree is chaos on the internet, in the form of written tutorials,
launched on Christmas Day as a gift to the world. Happy holidays!

This website is hosted on a ThinkPad R500 running Libreboot, hooked up to an
L2TP tunnel router in my lab. It's the same server that
hosts [libreboot.org](https://libreboot.org/), a project I started in 2013.
I've been self-hosting for years, and now I want to teach everyone else how
to do that. This is a learning exercise for me aswell, because there are
always new technologies coming about.

If you want to help out, write a guide! [Patches welcome!](../git.md).
